Racial Borders: Black Soldiers Along The Rio Grande (South Texas Regional Studies, Sponsored By Texas A&M University-Kingsville)

Racial Borders: Black Soldiers Along the Rio Grande (South Texas Regional Studies, Sponsored By Texas a&M University-Kingsville)

When the Civil War ended, hundreds of African Americans enlisted in the U.S. Army to gain social mobility and regular paychecks. Stationed in the West prior to 1898, these black soldiers protected white communities, forced Native Americans onto government reservations, patrolled the Mexican border, and broke up labor disputes in mining areas. African American men, themselves no strangers to persecution, aided the subjugation of Indian and Hispanic peoples throughout the West. It can hardly be surprising, then, that the relations among these groups became complex and often hostile-hardly surprising, but rarely examined. Despised by the white settlers they protected, many black soldiers were sent to posts along the Texas-Mexico border- perceived to be a